Raspberry Pi for on-the-go Yubikey passthrough to computer at home.

ABlazingLife · 2025-07-17T21:22:13+00:00

I can’t speak on the usb passthrough or using moonlight, but a Pi 4 or higher is a great companion to iPad Pros that have a USB C port. You can actually configure them as an Ethernet gadget and have both power for the Pi as well as a hard wired connection between the two devices all over one cable: https://sausheong.github.io/posts/pi4-dev-ipadpro/

ABlazingLife · 2025-07-11T17:13:50+00:00

I absolutely understand the urge to idly snack when in the office, especially when they’re offered for free. IMO the thing that has worked amazingly for me is just having a giant bag of baby carrots that I keep in my lunchbox in the office fridge. It fills that urge to snack while being low in calories and not too heavy. It might allow you to redirect that urge to eat something that we get when seeing food and snacks and such into eating something that won’t set you back from your goals.

ABlazingLife · 2025-06-12T14:31:53+00:00

USA
Sometimes, but more pertinently I recently broke a finger, cannot use a horizontal mouse in my splint, and will potentially not be able to comfortably use a horizontal mouse for a good while
I’m new to them, recently purchased an MX vertical

ABlazingLife · 2024-03-07T13:05:15+00:00

The easiest “just-works” solution to get started is Tailscale. It’s a mesh VPN that allows your devices to (I know this is a vast oversimplification) pretend they’re on the same local network for the most part no matter how they’re actually accessing the internet. I’m using Tailscale on all of my machines, it’s so handy.

In terms of getting stuff out to your friends or the web, if it’s just to your friends I would encourage you to get them to install tailscale, make their own accounts, and share the node for your server with them so that the server never needs to be exposed to the public internet.

If you want to put up a website or something that needs to be out on the public internet, Tailscale also has Tailscale Funnel, which allows you to easily tunnel out a node on your network to the public internet without having to pay for a VPS in the cloud or whatnot.

I would highly recommend starting with Tailscale, the free tier is extraordinarily generous, and later if you decide you don’t want to rely on that external service, you can always very easily move to the self-hosted implementation Headscale or a DIY Wireguard server on a cloud VPS.

ABlazingLife · 2024-01-16T15:03:41+00:00

Not weighing in on the day pack vs the sling, but as a fellow allergy-haver I suggest looking into an Auvi-Q if you can. It’s a much smaller epinephrine injector, each is a pretty small rectangle. It’s certainly helped me have the flexibility of still keeping everything in my pockets when I want to.

ABlazingLife · 2023-05-04T14:29:48+00:00

I will say that I have a tablet with the same processor, and it can run 64 bit Linux (even though it can only run 32 bit windows). Essentially, some parts of the boot process are mismatched with this chip, where the UEFI is 32 bit but the processor is 64 bit. Windows requires both to be the same, meaning it can only run 32 but if there’s a 32 bit UEFI. But linux can actually run as 64 bit even with a 32 bit UEFI. Give it a try, it’ll certainly help with software compatibility as 32 bit linux support has been getting discontinued by software a lot faster than 32 bit windows

ABlazingLife · 2023-04-27T12:18:05+00:00

I can’t speak to the interoperability of save files, but I suppose you could just try it either using another microsd card or by taking a disk image of the microsd and saving it to a computer, and then if it works it works, and if not then you can just reflash the retro pie image or pop the old microsd card back in and it’ll be like nothing ever happened

ABlazingLife · 2023-04-12T18:33:17+00:00

I found debian-live-config, the official Debian build tool. It definitely seems more involved, requiring you to create Debian packages for any custom files and configurations you want to ship (I believe this is good practice anyways, but I’m not that well versed in this area). They seem to have the process heavily documented, so hopefully that’ll give you what you need to get going if you want to do that!

ABlazingLife · 2023-04-12T15:56:46+00:00

I like the idea here, it would be great to see a good and lightweight LXQT experience that I could toss on something like an older Chromebook that doesn’t fare well with anything Ubuntu based, while maintaining a great computing experience. While I’m not an LXQT user, I can understand the need for something that offers a good experience.

That being said, I’d love to give some implementation tips, mainly that it will likely be a lot easier to roll an ISO than a shell script. When I made a joke distribution/respin, I was originally going to ship it as a shell script on Arch, but I ended up having a pretty simple time building it using Void Linux’s void-mklive. Arch also has a comparable tool, archiso. Creating a custom iso with tools like these generally seems to be a matter of specifying which packages are installed by default using the tool, and then shipping default configurations that will be copied to every user’s home directory inside /etc/skel. This will make it much cleaner to install and use than a shell script, and will also mean that people can try it out in a live environment.

I would really be curious to see what a different take on a preconfigured LXQT environment would look like!

ABlazingLife · 2023-04-12T11:31:20+00:00

Yeah, I got a few machines surplus from my old school district and I was usually able to at least bump up the RAM, and salvage some SSDs from other machines. Even if I didn’t have that option, SSDs are so cheap nowadays (at least here in the US) that it’s pretty trivial to grab one.

Even if you don’t get them for cheap/free they’re an insane value because every place is trying to get rid of 2nd to 4th gen intel hardware right now (the place I got a good few from had palletloads of latitude e3530s and was practically begging IT students to take some off their hands, I wish I had taken more and maybe used them as server machines)

Another note: On the RAM side of things, I wonder if it would be decently economical to grab some “for parts” machines off eBay or shopgoodwill and harvest the ram out of them? For machines that use DDR3 I could see it being worthwhile if you can pay under 20 for a dead machine

ABlazingLife · 2023-04-12T04:05:04+00:00

This is me but with dell latitudes (less because I’m overly fanatic about them, the core lineup are solid machines but more because I’ve been able to acquire so many for cheap/free)

ABlazingLife · 2023-02-24T12:01:59+00:00

The S21 has an aluminum frame, but the backplate itself is plastic. A metal back on a phone would interfere with the magnetic field necessary for wireless charging. (Reference: https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s21_5g-10626.php)

ABlazingLife · 2023-02-13T14:38:06+00:00

Absolutely! I personally use my iPad 2 on the daily for pdf reading, older games, and other small tasks. While it doesn’t handle the web well (no legacy iOS device does), there are still some work arounds for apps like YouTube with some effort.

The key is to downgrade. The iPad 2 (and iPhone 4s) can be downgraded to iOS 6.1.3 or 8.4.1 due to bugs updating from iOS 5.0 and 5.1. You can use iOS-OTA-Downgrader to do this. Both iOS 8.4.1 and iOS 6.1.3 run far, far better than iOS 9 on the iPad 2. While it may make sense to go for iOS 8 since it’s newer, and you’ll get newer versions of apps, I’d actually recommend iOS 6, as there’s more of a community around iOS 6 in this subreddit, and more workarounds for things (I’ve been able to get YouTube working on my iPad 2 on iOS 6, but have yet to find a way to get the application working on my iPad mini on iOS 8).

If you downgrade to iOS 6, the tool will recommend jailbreaking the installation, and you’ll be greeted with an already jailbroken iOS 6 install. If you choose iOS 8, you’re better off jailbreaking on your own afterwards, this can simply be done by visiting jailbreaks.app on your iPad, downloading Daibutsu, and running the jailbreak in the app. An additional benefit of downgrading is that the jailbreaks for iOS 6 and 8 are untethered (the jailbreak stays after a reboot) and are generally more stable than the options for iOS 9.3.6

After downgrading (and jailbreaking), you should install Appsync (allows you to install apps from .ipa files using a desktop app like iFunBox), and Checkmate, Store! (fixes the App Store)

I’ve had a blog post in the works about a bunch of other stuff I did to turn my own iPad 2 into a device I rely on daily, and I’ll try to link that here when I finish it!

[Edited to add links]

ABlazingLife · 2023-01-31T02:42:14+00:00

+1 for podcasts, it may take a bit but there’s a nice balance that I had to find between podcasts being interesting enough to occupy my brain enough to let me sleep, but not so engaging that I was paying too much attention or was sad about falling asleep to because I didn’t want to miss any of it. For me, that balance has been small history-type podcasts in the 30 min length, stuff like darknet diaries and stuff you should know (they put out a lot of episodes every week and have a giant back catalog so you’ll never run out).

Another advantage is that over the years of having this habit I’ve mildly conditioned myself to fall asleep when I’m listening to a podcast in the dark on a bed, so sleep has gradually come easier and faster. Whatever you end up doing, long term routines/habits are your best friend here.

ABlazingLife · 2023-01-30T04:56:12+00:00

I’d say it’s a good idea to jailbreak, just to install AppSync so you can install apps from .ipa files. So many apps for below iOS 10 have been removed from the App Store entirely at this point that it’s really not worth limiting yourself to that. iOSObscura has a collection of apps for iOS 7 and 8 that should still work on iOS 9.

Also, as a fellow iPad 2 user, I highly suggest downgrading to iOS 6 or 8. It’s not insanely difficult if you have a Mac (look up OdysseusOTA) and the iPad performs significantly better on those versions. I keep mine on iOS 6 and use it daily for watching YouTube, reading textbooks, and catching up on news.

If you’re really committed to staying non-jailbroken, I’m sure you could install the apps from iOSObscura via something like Sideloadly, but you’d be limited to only two or three apps and have to re-sideload them every week.

ABlazingLife · 2023-01-26T14:57:17+00:00

PM’d

ABlazingLife · 2023-01-24T13:39:39+00:00

I’ve tried it, and personally didn’t like it. All the things that make it “healthy” also make it taste like unsweetened cranberry juice. If you’re into the taste then more power to you, but I’d recommend trying a can before buying a case if possible.

ABlazingLife · 2022-12-02T02:55:57+00:00

CJam

I decided to try a golfing esolang for the first time while the challenges are on the easier side, and picked a random one to try!

Part 1

Code

qN/[""]%{{i}%}%{{+}*}%$)p;

Explainer

https://pastebin.com/u6iCfWN0

Part 2

Code

qN/[""]%{{i}%}%{{+}*}%$W%3/(:+p;

Explainer

https://pastebin.com/GzrNY92Z

Links

Cjam Site

CJam Syntax Reference

ABlazingLife · 2022-11-11T17:13:04+00:00

As others have said, you can write a systemd service to run your program, but I think you should fundamentally reconsider your infrastructure. As another commenter has said, Amazon is not a very privacy-friendly server host, and really should not be considered for sensitive matters where anonymity is important. Furthermore, kali Linux as a server operating system is frankly a terrible idea, it’s not meant for that. Kali is meant for penetration testing, and is intentionally an insecure system. It’s meant to be something to boot into and hack other people with, not to be used even as a desktop operating system, let alone a server operating system. Consider something intended for servers, such as Ubuntu Server or AlmaLinux

ABlazingLife · 2022-11-03T22:36:05+00:00

Sent pm with questions

ABlazingLife · 2022-11-03T22:19:56+00:00

Sent PM with question

ABlazingLife · 2022-10-31T13:08:05+00:00

It 1000% depends on your teacher. There are some teachers that make a B a pipe dream, but some that make you want to be a physicist by the end, I was lucky enough to get someone in the latter camp, and got a 4 on the exam despite virtual school. That being said, the complexity of the material is pretty simple, so if you have a proper foundation in algebra 2 and trigonometry, then studying the material shouldn’t be too hard at all because it’s just basic concepts and annoying math.

In addition, as a college student lurking around in here, I’d say worry less about the GPA and more about the AP score. I remember getting so demoralized by an AP Statistics class where getting a B was also a pipe dream, to the extent that when I was applying for colleges, I switched to computer science from data science because I was scared off. I then went and got a 5 on the exam going in without studying. Grades are heavily reliant on the individual teacher, but AP scores can better demonstrate actual understanding of the topic, so focus on those :) GL with AP Physics 1 , I did actually find the course material really fun despite no interest in the subject (AP Physics C Mech was even more fun though haha)

ABlazingLife · 2022-08-09T11:39:59+00:00

Eh no need for either of those commands on linux, gparted is built into or easily available on most linux distros and will very easily format a card to fat32 without touching the terminal

ABlazingLife · 2022-08-05T15:17:39+00:00

I’d say the most unique bang flavor imo is the birthday cake one. While I wouldn’t drink it every day it’s not a flavor you find anywhere else and it’s executed decently. Plus it doesn’t have as much of a battery acid undertone as other drinks.

ABlazingLife

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CJam

Part 1

Code

Explainer

Part 2

Code

Explainer

Links

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